Establish browser requirements

[chealer]

​https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/ currently says nothing about browsers. Please publish either a whitelist of browser versions supported, or a list of browser technologies (such as HTML 5.0) which supporting suffices for a browser to be able to access WordPress.

[netweb]

Thanks for the ticket @chealer and welcome to #meta Trac :)

We have the list of supportd broswers documented in the core handbook ​here.

As such, I'm closing this ticket as worksforme, thanks again.

[chealer]

Thanks for the reply @netweb,
Unfortunately the handbook you're referring to is the "Core Contributor Handbook", a document which targets WordPress contributors. Requirements must be specified in a document for users and prospective users.

And unfortunately, it's not just a matter of copying that page. The page you mention doesn't say which WordPress versions support these browsers. Appropriate requirements would be in the form "WordPress versions x to y have the following requirements: [...] WordPress versions y+1 to z have the following requirements: [...]".
And that page seems to need love otherwise:

1. I don't know much about Android and iOS, but as far as I know, there are no "Android" or "iOS" browsers ("OS" means "operating system").
2. The page is presumably outdated (it visibly doesn't take into account Mozilla's ESR releases).

[dd32]

I don't know much about Android and iOS, but as far as I know, there are no "Android" or "iOS" browsers ("OS" means "operating system").

My understanding is that normally on these platforms the web rendering engine is supplied by the OS.

The page is presumably outdated (it visibly doesn't take into account Mozilla's ESR releases).

I believe that would be deliberate. If a browser isn't listed, it isn't actively supported (ie. tested and/or targetted for)

I don't personally think this is something that deserves a page.

[chealer]

Replying to dd32:
[...]

I don't personally think this is something that deserves a page.

No one proposed to create a page for that.

Why was this ticket's priority lowered to "low"?

[chealer]

Replying to dd32:

I don't know much about Android and iOS, but as far as I know, there are no "Android" or "iOS" browsers ("OS" means "operating system").

My understanding is that normally on these platforms the web rendering engine is supplied by the OS.

I discussed this with a reliable friend (Xavier Douville). According to him, by default, vanilla Android comes with a browser which is not Chrome, but an Android-specific browser. Apparently, this browser does not have a name besides "Android browser" or "Android web browser": ​https://android-browser.en.uptodown.com/android

It is rare to see this browser, because almost no manufacturer ships vanilla Android. Manufacturers preinstall a modified Android which comes with a different browser, like Samsung's. Moreover, according to ​this article even vanilla Android no longer uses that browser by default since Android version 4.2.

I suggest to describe this browser as "Android's integrated Android-specific browser".

[netweb]

Replying to netweb:

We have the list of supportd broswers documented in the core handbook ​here.

On this page it includes a link to the browsers included in the table listed.

The key information to this usage page is that the config is a ​Browserslist configuration for that web service, the document is not intented to list nor describe each browser name supported, just a configuration for the web service.

The page ​https://caniuse.com/usage-table documents the browsers included and the global percentages of usage, as you can see "Android Browser" is included in that list, WordPress does not target that browser though because its usage is under 1%.

[chealer]

Replying to netweb:

Replying to netweb:

We have the list of supportd broswers documented in the core handbook ​here.

On this page it includes a link to the browsers included in the table listed.

The key information to this usage page is that the config is a ​Browserslist configuration for that web service, the document is not intented to list nor describe each browser name supported, just a configuration for the web service.

This is not asking to describe each browser beyond its name. I discussed the "Android" case because that name is incorrect and even I (with over 10 years of experience in web development) had no idea what it meant.

The page ​https://caniuse.com/usage-table documents the browsers included and the global percentages of usage, as you can see "Android Browser" is included in that list, WordPress does not target that browser though because its usage is under 1%.

Well, that is not what ​Browser support documents (unless of course "Last 1 Android versions" refers to something other than "Android Browser", but in that case, that would be completely unclear).

Thank you for linking to that page again though because I notice that caniuse's "Android Browser" is supposedly at version 76, and the last version with any market share was version 4.4.4, which does not match ​https://android-browser.en.uptodown.com/android/versions at all. I therefore have no idea what that last page is about, unless it's some kind of fork of "Android Browser" which is no longer official (maintained by Google).

Also, please note that this ticket is about a lot more than Android Browser (see comment #2).

[tellyworth]

Would it help if the Requirements page was to link to ​https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/best-practices/browser-support/? "For browser requirements see here.." or similar

[chealer]

Yes, it would help, though it would not solve the issue, as indicated in comment #2.